


A Walk Through Scream Filled Rooms

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: A teacup shatters, Gen, Guilt, Insanity, Not all the rooms are beautiful, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, the stories we tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 07:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4171722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He finds her in the barren garden near the fountain, beautiful and shattered, the fireflies silently drifting as dusk darkens, and in a way time stops, for a breath, forever.</p><p>--</p><p>Hannibal finds out how his sister tastes. Or. Hannibal won't go in these rooms, I hope that's warning enough for you. ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Walk Through Scream Filled Rooms

He finds her in the barren garden near the fountain, beautiful and shattered, the fireflies silently drifting as dusk darkens, and in a way time stops, for a breath, forever.

It is a curious feeling, loss. Once, he lost his parents, but that is obscured by time and bare connection. They had cared for him, and for her, and then they vanished, and on they both continued. A pull in him acknowledges it might have been easier had they remained. And in so many ways, arduously more difficult. He does not imagine, with a terrifying jolt, that he will never again hear them laugh. That they will not sit with him that night around the dying embers of flame. He considers for a moment, it is cold, for fireflies. Perhaps they are merely the blood rushing towards his head. She would chase them in the summer, catch the glow, and marvel with a child’s wonder.

Her blood is dark on the snow. It seeps. 

The loss is bright in his body, it seeps. 

But the anger is brighter. It attempts for a terrible moment that will never quite be over, that will fight him until he throws it away to the core of him, and throws the key further, to direct itself to the source of logical blame. An awful truth. A reality he knows, but does not want to acknowledge. That could twist the foundations of his world. For now, he digs his fingers into it and redirects it and that suffices. She was not enough, she allowed herself to be this, this broken, mangled, lovely figure in the snow, that had looked at him with bright eyes beneath a bruise, and trembled with fear in his arms days ago. 

_A man in the garden. Starving, Hannibal, he tried…_

Unacceptable.

And she, now, unacceptable.

He was certain she was ready, the bread crumbs carefully placed. The stranger had hurt her, and she would reclaim her power from him, reclaim the life he had taken from her. But she left him. Failed, and instead the rest of her was taken. He cannot yet forgive her that. Though a part of him, the part that is slowly overwhelming now, the longer he sits freezing, the snow dampening his clothes, the mud of soil creeping up below staining, and there is something clinging to his cheek, ice. Ice from water. Ice from water that is from him and not the air, and perhaps his shoulders are heaving, watching the body of his sister lifeless and feeling the tug of the battle he will not lose. The devil in the snow, the demon with bloodied hands, the boy of fifteen, crying, and his sister of less, dead. A part of him that pulls the devastation into it with calculating arms, and wonders, as it takes in the teeth marks, the ragged, clumsy, wounds of knife, though his vision blurs and won’t clear, so unseemly, tearing through her, wonders, indeed, what she tastes of. 

It is not hard to gather her up in his arms, the blood over them both now, his hair in his face. The tears still stinging, the dirty. Disarray. Trembling, his fingers tremble. Disorder. He hates those things, hates that she has caused them, as she always does in him. But she is not there to cause them any longer, beyond this. The thought shivers and soothes all at once. She is his now, to rewrite, remember, and mold as he will. 

_You scare me sometimes._

Whispers in the night when he has tucked her to bed. Thin syllables murmured into pillows that stop him in his tracks. Make him wish.

Wish. 

In wretched treasonous ways that he was other than but what he is. Her breaths, the little noises she makes, the fear present sometimes. The only sounds in the world that make him doubt, if even for a fleet. 

And he has lost her. 

And He has not forgiven her yet.

The lines he cuts, the blade smooth through her skin, she is tender and young, are neat. He repairs the mess made, the blunt savagery transformed to even slits, the lungs removed, the liver, the heart. He cuts her until she is no longer recognizable, until he has reconstructed the remains of her form into delicacies waiting, the flame licking up already on the stove. Love comes to fill the agonized spaces as reaches for seasoning and herb, elevates her. Dust to art, life to death to life. He makes her more beautiful as they prepare for dinner, fragrant, rich, delicious. 

The wild man in the garden, the starving man, had thought to consume her raw, had stolen breath from her body and left her ugly. But he repairs her now. It eases him to see her once more, as she should be. Moves him in steps away from anger, disappointment.

The imagination of her small form, of her arms around his waist, the threatening cloud of anguish still lurking, and the other truth, the one he pushes farther away still, far with the doubt she would rend in him, far with the quiet warmth of sensation, with the roots that slowly might have taken hold, he continues to remove. Already, he prepares locks, digs holes with no end to cast them into. It was foolish of her to raise that in him, betrayal. It was foolish of her to die. 

Music fills his head to bury thought. Away and away and away. He imagines her screams, they echo as doors close. The music grows louder.

The table is set for two, as usual, and then only for one. The dishes, he will wash and dry this evening. And for every other evening to come. She must be cold from all the snow, warmed by the fire, but still sniffling. _A story first._ She would have demanded, finding his side with a blanket. _Tell me a story._

And he too is dripping wet. He might change for dinner, that would be the logical progression. It is an important dinner after all. But fear strikes him that if he moves the doors will burst open, the screams will sound, time will take him backwards instead of forwards. Time will move at all. He thinks she will forgive him his impropriety. Just this once. He makes the tea he would have insisted she drink, places the steaming mug besides his plate though it does pair with the dish. She will catch her death. In the snow. 

When the meat finds his tongue, it is sweet, soft and seasoned, but he does not taste her. Only senses acutely as they meet, as he consumes her. Closer than an evening in the armchair, more beautiful than her twittering voice in song. Fulfilling as little else could be. She is his in this instant of connection that they savor together and she is faultless.

The melodies roar louder. 

He will leave this place, he knows, will never return. When his eyes open, when the beauty of her leaves, and the halls are hollow once more. This place where her ghost will haunt, whisper in his ear, in her soft terrible voice, what he cannot bear to hear, _Your fault. You did this._

_You, you, you._

He floods thought with sensation.

A rush of drums, a swell. A climactic sinking of teeth. 

“I forgive you.”

He murmurs, to her, pronounces to the air, the smile not yet faded from his lips, elation, tears streaming once more, ecstasy, of course. Perfect sanity in madness. And he is calm now, still, a picture of calm. Rising. Cleaning, blood wiped from counter, unnecessary meat discarded. He will never taste her again clashing with he will never see her again, and a curious pressure rises in him. 

Without intent, his hand lashes out, finds the teacup, she hadn’t drank it, her death in the cold, and sends it sprawling to the floor. 

The shatters cringe through him.

Somewhere, very far, the whisper of her screams sound. 

The music louder for him, for the screams another layer of locks. 

_You did this._

She had failed him, but he forgives her.

He watches the shards gleaming in the light. They do not move though he waits keenly as though they might for a heartbeat.

And then he rises, begins to walk and doesn’t stop.

In him. Here. Time stops. For a breath. Forever.

 _Once upon a time._ He starts his story. _There was a boy who loved his sister._

He does not yet know how it ends. But stories, Mischa always tells him, should end with _happily ever after._


End file.
